Inspection and metrology technologies are conventionally used in semiconductor fabrication facilities for material monitoring, disposition, yield prediction, and yield management. Wafers are inspected at various stages of production using both in-line and off-line processes. Measurement and inspection instruments conventionally require manual interaction for setting up recipes for the instrument.
Conventional methods for setting up instrument recipes are tedious, error prone, time consuming, and often result in less than ideal data. For example, a typical method requires a human being to draw rectangles or complex polygons by hand on the instrument interface using a mouse or trackball. Another method is for a human being to “mark” the corner of a device feature in the live video image from the measurement instrument microscope and drive the physical stage of the instrument to the next “measurement site” in the x or y direction to enclose the rectangle for inspection (measurement) inclusion or exclusion.
Current techniques for instrument setup can take anywhere from minutes to several hours and impact the available time an instrument can be used “in production,” which can also affect downstream process tools waiting for a specific measurement—impacting the efficiency of the entire fabrication facility.
What is therefore needed are systems and methods that improve inspection or metrology instrument performance and reduce the manual interaction required to setup an instrument to improve the precision, accuracy, and efficiency of the fabrication facility.